HyperExchange: A protocol-agnostic exchange fabric enabling peering of Virtual Networks

With the growing pervasiveness of virtualization technologies, carrier networks are shifting from simple packet delivery platforms to multi-tenant integrated clouds offering fine-grained resource management. The need for interoperability among these autonomous cloud-based service providers has created demand for versatile and extensible exchange points to interconnect the future Internet. A novel SDX (Software Defined Exchange) can address this challenge and help redefine the Internet exchange by leveraging SDN. Current implementations of SDXs have focused on traffic exchange between conventional IP networks and have not been specifically intended for exchange between multi-tenant environments and virtual networks; and they have mostly relied on OpenFlow for network forwarding and functionality. While OpenFlow is the de-facto solution for fine-grained forwarding, it nevertheless provides limited network functionality. In this paper we present HyperExchange, a protocol-agnostic exchange fabric for peering of virtual networks. HyperExchange is designed to provide exchange services between autonomous Infrastructure Providers and their hosted Virtual Networks. As a result, it specifically offers solutions for inter-domain tenant authentication and authorization for network control. By leveraging SDI as the core building architecture, HyperExchange uses SDN to forward and steer traffic in a fine-grained manner and yet relies on NFV to push all network functionalities to standard servers as software-based functions. This solution meets both scalability and extensibility requirements for long-term use. We have deployed a prototype of the HyperExchange between SAVI and GENI testbeds to serve real world exchange experiments.